Plot
The inept, somewhat slow-witted U.S. senator Melvin G. Ashton wants to run for President of the United States. His eager publicist, Lew Gibson, encourages him with various attention-gaining stunts, disappointing his girlfriend Poppy McNaughton, a reporter.
Political boss Fred Houlihan strongly urges Ashton to abandon his campaign. Ashton, however, has been secretly keeping a diary for decades in which he has recorded the various political ploys and sins of Houlihan and other politicians.
The beautiful Valerie Shepherd joins the campaign and Lew takes a liking to her. Poppy breaks up with him. During a political rally at Madison Square Garden, the diary is stolen. Valerie appears to be working for a political foe of Ashton's who persuaded her to infiltrate the campaign and steal the diary.
Ashton has lost his leverage and is willing to step aside, but only if Houlihan helps him find a new source of income. Seen as incapable of doing anything else, Ashton is offered a position as commissioner of a sports league, a job that pays twice as much as being a senator did.
The diary is retrieved by Lew and could return Ashton to the political stage. But a guilty conscience gets the better of him. He gives the diary to Poppy, who publishes it. That's the end for everyone politically, including Ashton. He moves to a South Seas Island, where his new ambition is to become king.
Read more about this topic: The Senator Was Indiscreet
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
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“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
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